Nhamm

Layers of clothing hide a collection of poorly-healed battle wounds that neither time nor demonic blood could erase. They burn with the reminder of her original purpose: Soldier. Shield. Slave. 

Worst of all is the spider that still mars the whole of her back. Rough, ugly, and wind-worn. Though she can't see it herself, knowing it's there (like a stamp, a brand) makes her want to claw her body to ribbons. 

Kagura’s scars feel like a curse.

-

The wind god finally allows her to resurrect, and it is a disappointment that her body remains unhealed.

Jaken complains about the time she spends melting away in hot springs, unaware how many minutes are dedicated to scrubbing her skin raw. Her displeasure is not out of a sense of vanity; rather the constant reminder the marks make, of the being that put them there. 

I will be free, Kagura spits at her tormentor's back for the hundredth time. Echos of a thousand demonic cries shudder through the castle walls. 

Naraku doesn't even spare a look back towards her as he retorts, You don't even have a reason to exist without me.

Now she has a life of her own. But with how the vessel containing her spirit looks, who would know?  If she could live with a hollowed out place in my chest, then a few layers of skin off the back won’t matter…

The sky grows dark, indicating she's taken far too long. So Kagura grits her teeth and ties her kimonos loosely around sore, stinging shoulder-blades. The spider mark burns; perhaps Naraku is using it to send her a message from Hell. 

That night, curled up together in a cave somewhere, Sesshomaru watches the ginger way she moves about. Predictably, he doesn't actually say anything. But Kagura picks a fight anyway, just to distract herself from what he could be thinking. 

Pity would be bad enough, and isn't something she wants anyway. Confusion is more likely; Sesshomaru often finds her feelings and behaviors a mystery. 

As for compassion - Jaken claims the daiyokai has developed some, in the time between Kagura's death and rebirth. But as the source is less than reputable, she won't hold her breath for that. 

-

Over the years, her body gains other scars. But it's different this time.  

It's not hard for someone with Kagura's taste for fun to meet with trouble - how fascinating, that violence seems to be a constant partner of good entertainment! So she collects a few more battle wounds. It takes days for her demonic energy to fade them into a white or pink interruption of skin. But in this life, Kagura is not shut up in a corner of the castle to wonder at the consequences of resting for too long. Instead, Sesshomaru sits by her side with little comment, other than a dry reprimand for her lack of sense. And nothing happens to her heart.

Well, nothing bad, anyway. 

A year after her resurrection, they kiss for the first time, and his fangs catch her lip. It's sharp enough to leave a divot that she runs her tongue over at night. Not with fear, but excitement. And the next time their lips meet, she tries her best to give him a matching one.  

Her body stretches as she eats and drinks and laughs more often; in the hot spring, she counts blue stripes along her hips and thighs and delights in how they look like sunlight rippling across wind-touched water. It leaves much less time to try to wash away a dreadful past. 

Jaken mentions it off-handedly one night - a demon who makes art out of people's bodies with ink. Kagura interrupts to ask about something she will never remember later, and as with most of their conversations, it quickly devolves into a screaming match. She ends up so focused on chasing the kappa around the room with blades of wind, that Sesshomaru's thoughtful expression completely passes her notice. 

A few days later, he takes her to a grimy seaside village. They stop at a dark stall covered with line-work designs, where he stuffs a genuinely worrying amount of money into her hand. "This should cover anything that you feel is necessary."

To cover her rapidly increasing heartbeat, Kagura punches his arm with a shout - don't treat me like a greedy little mistress you're abandoning in a merchant's square! But even if he didn't have excellent hearing, the warm wind that twines around his shoulders would still make her delight clear. 

The self-proclaimed artist, Yatora, deems the scars on her wrists "not a problem". He is clearly taken aback when she states that is not her concern; when she pulls away the final kimono to display the spider scar that still stains her back, the response is a frustrated sigh.

"Well...I hope you can handle pain." 

Memories rush in, but she is past feeling like she'll drown in them. "Won't be a problem."

-

In the growing darkness, Kagura flexes her shoulder-blades carefully to test the stretch of the raw, needled skin. She left the mirror somewhere, or else she'd go to look at the finished design again. Even swollen and healing, it makes the air around her sing with pride, to have the spider finally covered. 

Sesshomaru watches her move, eyes half-lidded. After some time, he murmurs, "What was it that convinced Fujin to resurrect you?" 

Kagura twists her head towards the futon; he has never asked her this before. Perhaps because it didn't matter to either of them, so long as she was alive at all. As she considers how to answer, her tongue worries the divot in her bottom lip. 

"I dunno. It was something like - my smile had 'too much beauty in it to be left to a hopeless fate'."  

Sesshomaru frowns. 

"Okay, fine, I made that up. He never said why; don't reckon I'll ever know." 

He shifts closer; the tips of his claws run down the collection of blue lines striping her left hip, and she shivers. 

Clearing her throat, she says, “Whatever it is, I suppose you’re asking because you’re grateful for it?”

Sesshomaru’s eyes gleam in the barest hint of lantern-light that remains. It makes Kagura want to mark him, too.